Just out of interest.
I understand we need compliance officers and secure alarmed studios to stop
anyone getting in and broadcasting propaganda or terrorism threats etc. Does
that only apply to an FM licence and not internet live broadcasts. If it does
apply to internet how do you show you are policing multiple studios with no
security?
R
Sent from my iPhone
On 26 Mar 2020, at 16:07, Tony Davis <tonydavis210852@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I think Andy rises some good points about environment. We are however in
different times and some background disruption may be inevitable and, I
guess, would be understood by our audience. Not many of us have dedicated
studios and would probably have to broadcast from a dining room table or the
like.
Is also right about not having the same voices. Whatever we decide to do we
must manage the expectations of our audience and make it clear that this is
not business as usual. Hope that helps
Tony D
Sent from Mail for Windows 10
From: Andy Gunton
Sent: 26 March 2020 11:54
To: hrock@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [Hastings Rock] Re: Internet stream
Good work Jon.
I think there's a real basis for something that could work here, although
we'd obviously have to sort out the details before committing to it.
I agree that we should sort out the streaming service asap, in case we want
to use it.
I do have a couple of points/questions though:
How many people are going to be able to listen to any internet broadcast? I
understand it's only 50 at present? We need more coverage than that. How much
would that cost & is that easy to set up?
Is it only DJs in the second category that can use their own music for free
choices etc? I'm guessing so.
As we're only looking to cover the daytime is it worth going down the
specialist show route? I suggest not & think we should keep things as simple
as possible & have everything playlisted, with free choices as normal. Nick &
myself are still working on updating the current playlist btw.
What are we intending to broadcast when a live DJ is not available & for the
hours outside of the daytime when we won't be live anyway? I'm guessing
Robojock wouldn't work.
My main concern is the amount of DJs we will have to cover the 28 days. The
last thing we want is to have the same DJs on all the time. My fear is that
many won't be able to be involved due to not having the equipment, but mainly
because many won't have the space/environment/peace & quiet in their
household to do a live broadcast. Barking dogs & children playing in the
background etc don't make for good radio Let's not forget that many more
people are at home than normal atm, a situation that is likely to get worse
before it gets better. Kids are off school & many are working from home. I
have doubts that I'd be able to do a live show for those reasons. Not trying
to be negative, just playing devils advocate.
Cheers,
Andy
Andy Gunton
Phone: 07545 264247
<2F199170CAA542CD89EDBD179E34D051.png>
From: hrock-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <hrock-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> on behalf of
jon bird <hrock@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: 25 March 2020 20:00
To: hrock@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <hrock@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [Hastings Rock] Internet stream
No pressure on me then or anything with this....
Let me just start by stressing this is going to be all a bit
experimental, even if we have time to play with it over the next few
weeks I suspect there will still be drop outs and things that won't
quite work when we're on air. Given the amount of people working from
home, the Internet itself may also not be proving that reliable or fast.
We are definitely going to be winging it a bit here... The upside is I'm
not going anywhere so will be on hand to try and swiftly fix problems
when they do arise.
The proposal is to provide two tiers of operation. The first and the one
that will be applicable to most DJs is I will host a "mini" studio here
comprising the Playout PC which will be the source of our stream. DJs
will be able to use their existing computer to remotely control this
machine - aside from needing to install the basic software required to
remote in, all that is required is a microphone and headphones. They
don't even need to be that high quality (for reasons I'll go into in a
bit) and most laptops have built in microphones which would suffice if
push comes to shove.
When they remote in they'll see the Playout system which I think
everyone is familiar with plus a couple of extra additions - see the
attached picture.
Underneath the Jingle Consoles you'll see two sliders marked "Vol",
these control the output levels of the two channels Playout provides and
hence can serve as faders for each player. However the reality is that
firstly, since everything is being mixed digitally it is impossible to
saturate a channel - ie. you can't take it above 0db and secondly you
may recall last year we did some trials on normalizing the music to the
same level of perceived loudness? As a result of that, all of the audio
is now at that same fixed level so there shouldn't really be any need to
fiddle around with these levels anyway. Really all that should be needed
is to drop the volume level when you want to speak over a track. For
that I think it will prove easier to use the two "hotkeys" on the
keyboard which drop the levels by a fixed amount & can then restore them
again quickly afterwards. Just leave the levels where they are and use
these instead.
Overlaid on the station logo is a new "floating" dialog which has the
output level meters and Pfl buttons for each of the channels. The level
meters reflect either the main output or whichever Pfl'd channels are
enabled. A key thing (and to simplify things) is that a Pfl'd channel
will automatically be taken off the broadcast output at the same time.
In the centre of the display is the other "floating" dialog which
provides a mic fader, Pfl buton and (this screen grab isn't quite the
latest) there is now a "mute" button on there as well. As with the other
faders, once the level is set, it'll probably prove simpler to use that
rather than keep fiddling around with the fader.
Both of these new dialogs can be repositioned on the screen to wherever
is most convenient to the DJ.
We're going to be using a software package called Teamviewer to remote
into the system. The DJ's mic will be fed into the mix stage and out
with the audio, you will also be able to hear the audio currently being
played however you will not hear your own voice over the headphones (it
will however show up on the level meters). This is because there will be
a slight lag on the audio uplinks - it's not bad, around the 1s mark
compared to our Internet stream which will be tens of seconds behind.
It's also important to note that this software is really designed for
holding voice calls (in part that is why the lag is that much shorter)
however the audio quality you get in the headphones is quite poor
(probably AM radio type quality at best). It also tends to get worse
when you speak. This doesn't reflect the audio quality of the music
going out however the voice quality will also be much lower than we're
used to (hence my comment earlier about not worrying about using decent
mic/headphones!).
The second tier of operation is really for those people who have their
own studio setup, are sourcing their own music (ie. probably the
specialist shows) and are pretty ok with the technology behind running
an Internet stream. Those people will effectively be able to take
control of our outgoing feed and source the entire thing from their
system. I won't go into any more detail on that right now because to be
honest that's all pretty straightforward stuff.
I think that just about covers it. This stuff is functional in as much
as I've done some basic testing with it here, another station is
planning on rolling it out so we may get some feedback on it with an
idea of how truly viable it all is. I plan to get it up and running on
the Hastings Rock machine and then we can let people have a play.
Fortunately we have a fair few weeks to do that and hopefully work
through any fundamental issues before the broadcast start date.
One thing to add, we should probably decide sooner rather than later
whether to at least get the streaming services bought, even if we don't
actually end up doing this. I doubt there is a rush on right now but I
do know (because I'm one of them) some people have been considering
starting up their own little neighbourhood radio stations and we don't
want to suddenly find all the providers haven't got any spare capacity.
j.
--
== jon bird - OAS Software
== Hastings Rock Radio, IT secondment
== http://www.onasticksoftware.co.uk/
== email: hrock@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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